Astrophotography

Getting a Milky Way shot at this beach had been on my bucket list for a while. This same night I hiked down the steep short trail to the beach to get Milky Way shots from the beach as well. The red glow is coming from a campfire on the beach where a few people put up tents to camp out overnight. Not a bad idea for the next time I go to this beach.

I arrived at this location around 2:30 AM after a long drive from Lake Tahoe on very little sleep. I almost didn't go out and shoot this boat because I was so tired, but I pushed myself. After reviewing the photos in the camera, I was suddenly wide awake. There was no wind and it was eerily quit to where you could literally hear a pin drop. The moon provided plenty of light to illuminate the scene.

This is a rare trifecta of types of moons you can see. Each one by itself is pretty common, but for all 3 to land on the same night is very rare. The last time it happened was in 1866. The 3 types of moons that lined up on 1/31/2018 are the super moon, blue moon, and blood moon (total lunar eclipse).

The crashing waves kept the sand wet long enough to reflect the brighter stars during this 30 second long exposure shot. The reflected stars are in the lower center area. The other lighting is coming from the house to the left of the beach.

This photo was taken at 10,023 feet (3,055 meters) at the summit of Haleakala on Maui. Out in the distance in the middle, you can see Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea on Big Island.
This shot is made from 8-10 shots stitched together. The native resolution is roughly 45 inches (114.3 cm) width by 15" inches (38.1 cm) height, so very large prints would look great!

I went up to Haleakala yesterday to take sunset photos(see previous post). I also brought my Explore Scientific 127mm carbon fiber triplet refractor telescope and my Celestron CGEM mount. It was pretty cold and a little windy, but the sky was perfectly clear! I was a little disappointed, since the tripod/CGEM mount alignment was a bit off (user error), which meant the tracking was also off. What that translates to is that I couldn’t take any photos through the telescope (star trails). I finally got the Orion Nebula (also known as Messier 42, M42, or NGC 1976) into view and focused. I decided to take a chance and take some photos of it. To my surprise the tracking wasn’t that bad. I couldn’t take minutes long photos of M42, but I was able to get some 10 and 20 second shots. This is a single 20 second shot.